Iris
by Monny287
Summary: Harry's locked himself up in his room, and no one can get him out. No one, that is, until Hermione. Cliche coming out of everywhere, but I just couldn't resist. Kinda song fic to Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, oneshot.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. J.K. Rowling owns it all.

A/N: The song "Iris" belongs to the Goo Goo Dolls, but I couldn't resist using it for a fic!

Harry's POV 

I woke up, gasping, from another nightmare. Voldemort's innovative home movies were getting worse and worse by the day, and wreckign havoc on my mental health. Over an over again, each night, until I had every part, every miniscule detail memorized.

They were completely random, though always the same dreams. Sometimes it was Sirius falling gently into the abyss on the other side of the veil, with me powerless to stop it. Other times it was Order members collapsing in the midst of battle, struck down by wayward curses, with me helplessly watching from the sidelines. The worse one came when I was most vulnerable, and this one played most of all. Hermione, tied to a tree, and being tortured over and over again, and all I could do was watch until I woke up, with tears streaming down my face. _Powerless, helpless, watching from the sidelines._ It was all too much. I wished Rita Skeeter could see me now. I could just imagine her sitting across from me in the corner, smiling wickedly as her quill raced back and forth across the page: _From the Boy-Who-Lived to the Chosen One: the Spiral into Insanity._

Every few minutes, a knock would come at the door, usually Remus, pleading with me to come out, if not for my sake then for Mrs. Weasley's, or Mrs. Weasley saying that if I wouldn't come out for my sake, then for Remus's. I just huddled closer to the wall, squeezing my eyes shut and willing them to go away, refusing the food, casting my own locking spells on the door, anything to keep them out. I was a curse. Four people I loved died because of me, and I had no intention of that casualty rate rising in the near future.

Hermione's POV 

I had, that summer, nearly paced a hole through my bedroom floor to the living room downstairs. Every owl came back unanswered, my constant pleadings to the Order to tell me what was going on denied, and my sanity going out the window. Finally, though (with much relief from my parents, who had endured my wrath so often that I swear they were considering shipping me to Siberia), I received an owl, unfortunatly, Pig, who I'd had to chase around the house (gave Mum a heart attack) and nearly tie to a chair to get the letter off. He flitted about my head as I unrolled the small piece of parchment.

Hermione— 

_Sorry about the lack of informtion you've received. Your assistance is required in and urgent matter at headquaters as soon as possible. Information about the situation will be given to you upon your arrival. _

_Remus Lupin_

After that, everything happened extremely fast, and to this day I can't remember half of it. Almost before I had finished reading the note, I felt the familiar tug behind my navel, and I found myself, feeling rather sick to my stomach, in the sitting room of Grimmauld Place. Lupin was sitting, looking anxious, on a moldy sofa.

"You couldn't have mentioned, maybe, that you'd turned the letter into a portkey!" I glared at him. "A sentence or so would have done!"

"Not really, and sorry about that," he said, standing and pacing back and forth as I nearly collapsed onto the sofa. Traveling by portkey was not the most delightful way of traveling, and my head was still spinning when he started to explain.

"I'm sorry we haven't been giving you any information, and don't intterupt, please, Hermione," he said as I opened my mouth in protest. "But the situation at hand has left little time for much of any thing else but worrying, especially with how much weight he's losing—"

"Who's losing weight?"

"Harry, but please, Hermione, let me finish—"

"What! Where is he!" I nearly bowled the poor Defense professor over as I stood up suddenly.

"In his bedroom; he won't come out. Molly and I have tried nearly everything, and we can tell his nightmares are getting worse,"

"Have you checked on him at all?"

"We've tried, but the door's locked, and it seems to be a spell of his own that he's using,"

"Are you a wizard or not? There are plenty of ways around his spells. Why didn't you just vanish the door?"

"The spell that's locking the door doesn't seem to react to any spell, vanishing or otherwise, and with the power within him, it makes it very hard to—where are you going?" I had already moved away from the professor and headed toward the door. There was nothing worse than a very depressed Harry in a house where no one knew what to do. He was probably holed up in his room, his mind succumbing to guilt and anger at everyone.

I found his room, which had really been Sirius's old room, easily at the top of the stairs. The locking charm proved to be fairly easy in it's structure, which led me to wonder how it could have eluded so many trained wizards. Idiots.

"Finite," I muttered, after extracting my wand from my pocket. Cautiously, I knocked on the door. No answer. Big surprise. I turned the knob and opened it.

"Harry?"

Harry's POV 

I heard footsteps coming in the direction of my room. I prayed that they'd turn and disappear down the hall. Much to my chagrin, they stopped in front of the door. Great. It was probably another Order member, ready to drop the charm on the door and drag me out. Or maybe it was a therapist, ready to delve into my history and then commit me to the loony bin. I was about ready for it, I can tell you.

"Finite," I heard someone mutter. Wait, not someone. Hermione. She was always able to drop my charms. Unfourtunatly for her, she was one of the last people I wanted to see at the moment. She'd been hurt enough at my hands.

She knocked on the door. In my true depressed Potter style, it was met with an echoing silence. Apparently, the hint was not going to be taken. I turned my head as the door creaked open.

"Harry?" she asked, rather timidly. I couldn't stand to look at her. I was afraid that if I did, the film reel that had played all last night would come back, with me still helpless.

"Harry, look at me," she sat down beside me. I kept my back turned.

"Harry, please turn around," she said, placing a hand on my arm. I did, and she gasped.

Hermione's POV 

This was not the Harry I knew. When he turned around, I gasped. When was the last time he'd eaten? His face was shrunken, strips of ashen skin stretched tight over cheekbones. His arms were straw-thin, and his clothes hung on him as though he were a toddler dressing in his father's t-shirt and jeans. His eyes, I noticed, had lost their emerald spark, and had been cruelly replaced by two dark green marbles that seemed to be looking through me.

"Harry, what's happened to you?" I asked him, enveloping my friend into a hug. He was so frail I was afraid I'd break him. He didn't answer.

"Please speak to me," I pleaded, holding his hands in mine. He looked at them, and suddenly yanked them away as though he'd been burned.

"You should leave," he said in a monotone. "It's better that way."

"What are you talking about?"

"You've been hurt enough by me. It be best if you left," he stared at his hands. I felt tears sting my eyes. What had he convinced himself?

"Harry, you've never hurt me," I said, choking down a sob. He looked up.

"In the Department of Mysteries, in the Forbidden Forest last year," he muttered to the wall behind us. "You nearly died. Both times. Because of me. It was all my fault. I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry about," I protested, lifting his chin so that I looked into his eyes. "It wasn't your fault. Death Eaters did those things, not you."

"The prophecy," he murmmered, still avoiding my face. "It's changing me. The words…they keep repeating…._neither can live while the other survives_…he'll make me just like him…." He wriggled out of my grasp and dropped his head into his hands. I was shocked, though I had no idea why. I couldn't imagine Harry going out and killing innocent people, or hating Muggleborns, or any of the things that made Voldemort so despisable.

"Listen to me," I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You will never be like him. You wouldn't go killing people for no reason. Harry, killing Voldemort won't make you a murderer. It will make you a good person for destroying phsycotic maniac."

Harry's POV 

_"You will never be like him,"_ her words confused me. I had already become him, hurting those who cared about me, getting people killed. I might as well have been a Death Eater. I'm sure they would have been happy to let me join, if it hadn't been for the fact they kept trying to do me in.

"That's not possible," I whispered to myself. "If I don't kill him…I'll be killed…not that it hasn't been fortold already…"

"What do you mean 'it's been fortold already'?"

"The second part of the prophecy, the part dear old Dumbledore failed to tell me. Trewlaney had another trance, last year. I was there, I heard it all. _The child born as the seventh month dies, the supposed savior of our kind, will not survive this final battle. On blood-soiled ground he will fall, never to stand again, and the world will fall into darkness until another such child appears…"_

He broke down into sobs as he finished. I was shocked.

"Harry, surely you don't believe in such nonsense," she said, putting on her best know-it-all look. "There have been very few _real_ fortune tellers, and I am sure Trewlaney isn't one of them."

"Isn't she? Wasn't she right about Pettigrew?" I had her there. She bot her bottom lip worriedly and encased me in another hug as I sobbed into her shoulder.

"I'm scared, Hermione," I said into her shoulder after awhile. "I don't want you to die." She looked at me as though I'd just sprouted antlers

"What are you talking about?"

Hermione's POV 

The things this boy was capable of convincing himself. If he hadn't been so pitiful looking, I would have tried to smack some sense into the boy. But at that moment, he looked liked a small child who'd woken up form a nightmare, needing reassurance.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, looking at him. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

"Nightmares," he muttered into my shoulder. "Tree…Voldemort….tortured, me….not able to move." I could only hear about half of what was said; the rest was muffled. I could hear the fatigue in his voice.

"And I couldn't stop it…" he went on, wrapping his arms tight around me. "And then, it stopped, and you were dead. I don't want to lose you. I love you."

Harry's POV 

"I love you," the words bubbled out before I had a chance to stop them. That was funny. Usually that required a massive internal battle before forcefully shoving those very words back down, as not to risk being turned into a slug. She gave me a gentle look, and softly brushed the hair off my forehead.

"I know, Harry. I love you too. Now come on, you need sleep," she went to pull me to my feet. I pulled her back down.

"No, not like that. Like this," and I kissed her. Man, I was pushing it. I was elated and terrified at the same time, every fiber ignited, the feel of her skin on mine causing a thousand sensations to course through my body. It took a few minutes for the rest of me to turn to complete goo, and realize that this kiss wasn't one-sided. We broke apart after what seemed like hours. I rested my forehead against hers, our breath intermingling. We were both slightly breathless.

"I love you," I repeated.

Hermione's POV 

"I love you," he said, and a shiver ran through me. He couldn't have known how long I'd waited for him to say that.

"I love you, too," I said, placing a kiss on his cheek.

"Really?"

"Really. Now come on, time for sleep," he kissed me again as I led him towards the bed in the corner (A/N: this is _not _going to end the way you think it is. Get your mind out of the gutter!)


End file.
